


Colour-Coded

by blueticked



Category: Hermitcraft RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Magic, Vex Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-27
Updated: 2020-06-27
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:34:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24937630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueticked/pseuds/blueticked
Summary: A new world meant a blank slate. No one had any memories of past seasons; none of the hermits remember each other beyond a vague sense of familiarity.Cub and Scar don't remember each other. They don't remember the vexes. But both of them find themselves drawn towards Scar's magical crystals and Cub thinks that the crystals are trying to tell them something.
Comments: 14
Kudos: 64





	Colour-Coded

**Author's Note:**

> I'm working on a longer story that's taking me a while to figure out and this was something I wrote as a break. Super casual :)

"Hi, I'm GoodTimesWithScar," he said with a friendly beam, then added with a bit of a fluster, "just call me Scar."

"Cubfan-one-three-five," he smiled broadly, teasingly, as he took Scar's outstretched hand, "or just Cub."

They knew each other. They must have worked together extensively; the way his hand slid comfortably into Scar's suggested that they had done this numerous times - a clasp of each other's hands in brotherhood and partnership. The way Cub immediately and automatically ribbed Scar for his little fluster during their introduction instead of being polite about it was a dead giveaway of how close they must have been.

They might not remember what exactly they had done together, but the strong sense of familiarity was enough to establish camaraderie and bring them together at the start of the new world.

And with the dangers of an empty inventory in a new world, many of them were quickly forming starter groups of safety before they headed out to explore their new surroundings. Xisuma (ex-suma? ee-suma? zi-suma? He said he didn't know himself, but they'd all eventually remember. They could call him X in the meantime), Cleo, Hypno, False and xB headed off in one direction. Beef, Etho, Iskall and Keralis headed off in another.

"I see that you're a wizard," Cub nodded at Scar's purple robes as they walked across the mesa together. Scar looked down at his outfit and tugged his robes close to hide the fact that he, for whatever reason, had no pants on.

"And you're a pharaoh," Scar quickly turned the conversation away from himself and back to Cub.

"I guess I am," Cub rested his hands on his waist, "it's kinda cold, actually."

"Well," Scar gestured at his pantless legs, "Same here," he said, and both of them shared a chuckle. "So," Scar gestured between them, "Magic?"

"Magic," Cub affirmed, and they had their first clue towards unlocking their memories.

Unlocking their past memories was something most people went for at the start of a season. It was a lot easier, after all, if you could remember yourself and your relationships with the people around you. The world was kind enough to give them hints; they were naturally drawn towards others whom they had a stronger relationship with. Tango, Impulse and Zedaph had already claimed a triangle area of land for themselves and it was obvious that the first letters of their name spelt TIZ.

"ZIT, dude," Tango had knocked Zedaph on the head when he had come to the TIZ conclusion, and Impulse burst into laughter. "We're Team ZIT."

"Oh right, that makes more sense. Whoops!" Zedaph grinned, and with a clap on his back from Impulse, the three of them headed back to their claimed land to figure out their own paths for the new season.

Following familiar paths and acting out familiar actions were ways of pursuing past memories; a strong enough sense of deja vü would unlock a series of memories. Another way was to seek out a significant item that had meant a lot to them. Sometimes they might chance upon it if it was something common like a specific flower, or a particular rock formation.

Not all memories were unlocked at once; just patches here and there. Sometimes memories were forever lost when they lasted an entire season without successfully unlocking their memories from a previous season. This usually happened when the item to unlock the memory was difficult enough to find that one never chanced upon it over the duration of an entire season, and eventually gave up the tedious search. No matter, new memories would be made.

But they were at the start of a brand new season now, and everyone was eager to discover who they were, what they had done, and who the people around them were.

Sometimes, external forces in the world guided their search for past memories, as in the case of cubfan135 and GoodTimesWithScar.

They had awoken in the new world already dressed in garments with a history of magic. Following the clues they were given, Cub went straight to the desert and built a pyramid. Scar settled in the jungle and began to clear it out in preparation for his magical village.

Yes, he did just tag on the word "magic" in front of his village in the hopes that it would prompt his past memories to surface, but it didn't work. He was slightly skeptical about the whole "magic" thing that had been forced onto him and was blatantly renaming things to be related with magic in the hopes that he could receive his memories and quickly move on in the world.

For example, these stained glass looked like magical crystals.

**GoodTimeWithScar: Magical crystals for sale! Slide into my DM's for more details on how you can feel the power of magic!  
cubfan135: ooooh  
cubfan135: slidin' into the DMs now  
**

Scar grinned at his communicator and sat at the doorway of Larry the snail with a barrel full of every stained coloured glass. He placed the communicator down and picked up a stained glass block to examine it, squeezing an eye shut and holding the blue glass cube in front of his other eye.

The world tinted blue before him.

_Blue._

His vision wavered slightly. The village blurred before him. The blue tint lightened and glowed _with energy and power_ -

There was something in the air around him. Something - or some _one_ he couldn't quite grasp, couldn't quite remember. Something _blue_ that _flew_ -

Something laughed at him. Something high-pitched, like someone blowing a dog whistle that humans couldn't hear; something just beyond his audio capabilities, too high-pitched to hear.

Scar blinked, and the strangely tinted bluish sight turned back to blue stained glass. The sounds in the air faded into oblivion. The fragments of memories slipped away.

A rustling of leaves from the forest and Scar forgot about what had just happened, despite the strange pang of disappointment residing in the depths of his heart.

"Hello," Cub called, emerging from the forest. Scar brightened at the sight of the friendly pharaoh. "I heard there was a wizard here?"

"That's me," Scar grinned and waved. He placed the stained glass back in the barrel with the rest and carried it down with him to greet Cub. "Are you here for your magical crystals?"

"You know it," Cub nodded, pulling some diamonds out for Scar to see. Scar hadn't thought about payment and was mildly surprised that Cub was prepared to pay for something he _must_ know was a little joke. "What do you have to offer me?"

"Check out these magical crystals," Scar placed the barrel down on the ground and gestured at it. "They give you boosts that will help you on a daily basis!"

"Wow," Cub seemed to be genuinely blown away by the renamed stained glass Scar had in the barrel. "Look at this… health boost? Invisibility? Stamina?"

"Oh, definitely," Scar nodded vigorously. "Feel free to hold them and try them out. One magical crystal for one diamond. Although I must provide the disclaimer that results vary."

"Absolutely, absolutely," Cub didn't seem to have heard Scar's disclaimer, shoving the handful of diamonds towards him. "Can I have one of each? Wait, no," Cub reached for more diamonds. "Two of each. I need a backup just in case."

"Of course!" Scar couldn't help but laugh at the ridiculousness of the situation. Cub was willing to pay him diamonds for stained glass? He was really buying into the whole magic hint a lot more than Scar himself was.

"Wow, what a great purchase," Cub commented, his hands now holding stained glass of every colour. Cub took a step back, and another. "Woah," he said.

"Do you feel anything?" Scar prompted.

"Woah, what- what is going on?" Cub shook his head.

"Ah yes, you must be overwhelmed by the magic," Scar giggled, placing a hand on Cub's shoulder and gently pushing him down into a sitting position on the ground. "Why don't you take a seat; I think you need some time to get used to the power of the magical crystals."

"Ah, of course," Cub agreed, his eyes glazed and far away; his voice distant.

Scar boxed Cub in a dirt house of safety and fled back to Larry the snail with his newly acquired diamonds, laughing softly to himself.

_"Hello everyone, and welcome to the fourth season of Hermitcraft Vanilla. There's some new people hanging out with us; I don't know how they got on the server, actually…"_

_"...and I'm thinking, why don't we head over to Rendog and ex-sumavoid, who are the people behind logfellas, and let's build a giant log of birch in their houses."_

_"...everybody rise for the honourable judge GoodTimesWithScar…"_

"Scar!"

Scar turned around at the sound of his name. Cub was breathless, as though he had been running around the jungle finding Scar when Scar was in fact just clearing out more jungle in front of Larry the snail, a short distance away from Cub's dirt box of safety.

"It worked!" Cub exclaimed, holding the crystals out. "Some memories came back! My house! The log and birchfellas! From season 4!"

"No way," Scar said, looking down at the coloured stained glass. "You're trolling me."

"It's true!" Cub paused to inhale deeply, still trying to regulate his breathing. "I had a dog, and I had a furnace array, and I was in a mesa biome! And- and you were there! You, and Iskall, and Ren, and it's pronounced ex-suma-"

"All the way from Season 4?" Scar interrupted with a skeptical squint. "The crystals were that effective?"

"Yeah!" Cub urged the crystals towards Scar. "Try them!"

"I already did," Scar took a step back. "I made them, remember?"

"Did you remember anything?" Cub asked eagerly.

_Something blue, something flew, something that laughed-_

"No," Scar shook his head. "It didn't work for me."

"Well, I'm keeping these crystals," Cub hugged the crystals to his chest, "I'm going to put them in a safe box and maybe I'll regain more memories from them one day."

"Maybe," Scar added doubtfully, but Cub was too excited to hear the disbelief in his voice.

The renamed stained glass were quickly lost in Scar's ever-growing chestmonster, but they never left Scar's mind, always at the forefront of his thoughts.

He couldn't stop thinking about them. His fingers itched to do something more with the renamed stained glass, or just stained glass in general. Honour them. Grow them. Turn them into real crystals, with real magic and real power. Turn his village into an actual magical village.

Scar gave in to his twitching fingers and built a giant blue crystal in the middle of his village.

It shone, it glowed, it was the centerpiece that drew the village together. There was something about the colour _blue_ that had Scar racking his minds in search of that crucial piece of memory, just out of his reach. If he knew what it was, Scar was certain the floodgates of memories would open for him.

But he couldn't access the memory because the 'crystal' was just made of plain stained glass. There was no magic in it, no power, no memories. Scar had tried, and failed.

No, what was he thinking? It wasn't enough. One glass crystal wasn't enough. If there really was magic in the world, one crystal wouldn't be enough to contain the magical energies; it wouldn't be enough to channel said magical energies in the right direction; it wouldn't be able to bring back his memories.

He had to build another.

And so a green crystal was built atop the creeper farm.

Set in the middle of a pool, the green crystal glowed in the sunlight it was able to catch. It tinted the water green, turning it into the water from a swamp. Or, something else just as green. Something like a _radioactive meltdown_ \- 

_-iskallium-_

-slime. The green crystal made the water look like slime. Scar smiled momentarily at the thought of having a slime river of a giant bouncy castle right in front of his village, but his smile quickly disappeared when the second crystal didn't bring him back anymore memories.

What was he doing wrong? He was following his instincts, building the crystals as he was told to. Why hadn't he received any solid memories, beyond the fleeting sense that something was just beyond his reach? Why had the crystals worked for Cub and not him?

He was mildly upset with the world now, teasing him like that, playing with his feelings like that. If the world wasn't willing to give him back his memories, fine. It wasn't something Scar was going to lose sleep over. He didn't need his memories; he'd create new ones. And his memories from this season would be stronger than ever, so he would never forget them again.

Scar turned his back on the crystals and turned his attention to his villagers instead. "Misfit magical creatures" was what he had called them. Maybe it was time to shed the whole magic thing. Maybe it was time to take off his wizard robes and just call the village what it was meant to be: a villager trading hub.

It was a few days after Scar had built the green crystal when Cub came to him, excited and restless. They finally had elytras and Cub came crashing in the middle of Scar's village, not slowing down in his hurry to get to Scar.

"Scar!" he called, "I have it! The next hint! To our memories!"

Scar was rebuilding his villager farms for the nth time because his villagers had perished to mobs again. Rolling up the sleeves of his wizard robes, Scar turned to face Cub.

"Remember the crystals you gave me?" Cub grinned broadly, and if he could, his smile would continue to widen; he was that excited. "They grew. It's real magic. They burst through a wall of my pyramid, and they're all pointing towards one direction. I think we should follow the direction the crystals are pointing to."

"Cub," Scar sighed patiently, "the crystals don't work for me. Just you. They've not helped me to recover my memories. I've tried." Scar gestured at the giant crystals around his base. "I built them because the world told me to, but they don't work."

"What? No!" Cub placed a firm hand on Scar's shoulder as Scar turned away, stopping him. "Don't you see? The crystals! They're a sign!"

"A sign to what?"

"A sign to- to our memories!" Cub gestured with a wide flourish of his arms. "Come on, Scar, you can't give up now. Maybe it was supposed to be a two-person puzzle. You make the crystals, and I figure out what they mean. And the crystals have spoken; they want us to go in the direction they're pointing!"

Scar shrugged Cub's hand off his shoulder and turned back to the farm. He walked a few paces over to a chest and began to rummage through it, mostly to avoid looking at Cub. "I'm fine without my memories, Cub. I'll make new ones this season."

"No, Scar, come on," Cub walked towards Scar and took his arm, shaking him slightly. "What do you have to lose? Look, I'll pay you. I'll give you diamonds if you follow the crystals with me. Please?"

Scar sighed again. He was getting tired of the whole memories thing. Why did each new world have to take away their identities? Why were they forced to seek out who they were? Who was enjoying the show, watching their frustrations as they were teased with memories just beyond their reach?

Scar placed the andesite block he was holding back into the chest and turned to look at Cub. "I'll go with you," he said, "but only because we're friends, and I don't want you to go alone. You don't have to give me diamonds. Or, you could still give me a few. I wouldn't say no to free diamonds."

"Alright! Great!" Cub pumped a fist in the air and Scar smiled, amused at how excited he was for a journey into the unknown that could potentially be deadly, and bring them no new memories.

They followed the direction of the crystals for a long time and finally came to a woodland mansion in the middle of a dark oak forest. 

"Is this it?" Scar whispered as they landed atop a dark oak tree, tightening his grip around his sword.

"Maybe," Cub lowered his voice, "we should probably check it out."

"Woodland mansions are scary," Scar whispered again, following behind Cub as they approached the second story of the mansion from the top of the tree. "They're where pillagers live. They're where Evokers live. And evokers can call upon the-"

_Something blue. Something flew. Something laughing at them._

"-ar? Scar? You okay?" Cub's voice cut into the sudden dizzying spell that had him lunging forward. He would have fallen if Cub hadn't grabbed hold of him in time.

"Yeah," Scar shook his head hard, steadying himself. "Sorry. I'm not sure what that was."

"It must be your memories," Cub raised his voice slightly in excitement. "It's working. We're going in the right direction. What was it? What did you remember?"

_Something blue. Something flew. Something laughing._

"I don't know," Scar said slowly, "it was just like a flash of light in my mind. A flash of blue light."

"Blue light. Okay," Cub took a deep breath, "that's what we have to look out for. Blue light."

Cub led the way, breaking into the woodland mansion from the side of the second story and drawing his bow at the pillager that walked towards them.

"Cub, wait," Scar gripped Cub's arm, preventing him from releasing the arrow. The pillager wandered right past them, as though it hadn't seen them at all.

"Magic," Cub turned to Scar excitedly. "We're protected by some sort of magic."

"Magic," Scar echoed.

_Something blue. Something flew. Something laughing._

Scar raised a hand to his head. There it was again, that strange high pitched laughter he could barely hear. It was calling to them. Calling for them.

"Scar?"

"Sorry," Scar took a deep breath. "I, uh, I heard something."

"Was it magic?"

"Maybe," Scar admitted, "I've… I've heard this laughter before, I think."

"Laughter?"

"Yeah, like a really high-pitched, screeching laugh-"

Scar winced at the high-pitched interruption to his explanation. It was trying to tell them something; it was saying something Scar couldn't hear. But Scar figured out the gist of its message: it didn't want Scar to explain the situation to Cub; it wanted Scar to find it.

_Blue. Flew. Laughter._

Scar looked up at the long hallway down the mansion. "There it is again," he pointed, "I heard it. This way."

"Okay. Let's go," Cub led the way down the corridor, holding his sword in front of him in case a pillager suddenly became hostile towards them. They followed the steps down to the first floor and the corridor branched out into three sections. Cub turned to Scar.

_Blue. Flew. Laughter. Blue. Flew. Laughter._

Cub's supporting hand on Scar's shoulder was the only thing keeping him standing. It was overwhelming, these flashes of blue and the high-pitched laugh he could barely hear. It wasn't comfortable or pleasant at all, and Scar wondered if whatever magic force drawing him towards his memories was intentionally messing with him.

"Scar," Cub's low voice grounded him. "If it's too much, we can leave. We can try again another day."

_Blue. Flew. Laughter. Blue, Flew, Laughter. BlueFlewLaughter. Blueflewlaughter-_

"No," Scar gasped, grasping onto Cub's arm tightly, barely aware of the way his nails dug painfully into Cub's skin. "No, they want us now. They won't let us go. They won't let me go. We have to go to them. Now."

"Okay, okay," Cub held Scar steady as he took a step towards the right corridor. "I wonder why they're only calling you; why I'm not hearing the laughter too."

" _You've done your part bringing Scar here. It's Scar's turn now_ ," Scar said, his voice a pitch higher than it usually was, speaking of himself in third person. The sentence ended and Scar squeezed his eyes shut, raising his hands to his head with a pained grunt.

"Okay," Cub responded to the magical force, guiding Scar down the right corridor, holding him up as he stumbled with heavy and blind footsteps. Cub could only imagine the pain Scar was experiencing, with some sort of laughter only he could hear, and the sudden magical force that took over just to speak to them.

The magic must be friendly, then. It must be familiar, something they had worked with comfortably in a past season. If they had no qualms against simply using Scar as a quick mouthpiece to answer his simple question, then they must be used to having the magic around them constantly. It just seemed strange now because they didn't remember what exactly the magical force was.

"All the way to the end," Scar managed to say, and Cub kept on walking, leading Scar down the corridor.

As they approached the end of the corridor, Cub was aware of the way the evokers came out of nowhere and began to surround them, watching them from a distance away. They didn't seem to be aggravated against himself and Scar but raised their arms in preparation for a summoning spell.

The end of the corridor was a dead end. Had they been tricked into a trap? Had the magical forces been malicious instead?

No. They just weren't at the end of the corridor yet. Scar took a step forward, guided by the magical force - were his eyes glowing? Were his eyes glowing faint blue? - and pushed a wooden button.

The wall opened up to reveal just a single vex banner hanging on the wall, laughing at them. There were two vex masks resting on the makeshift wooden table below it, made up of two upside-down stairs.

Behind them, the evokers completed their summoning ritual and a flurry of vexes entered the secret room with them.

Cub could hear it now. The high-pitched laughter of the many vexes, layering over each other in clashing and distorting sound waves. It was overwhelming with so many vexes around them, but with Scar's eyes already glowing blue, he didn't seem to be affected by the sound any longer.

Scar picked up a mask, moving on auto-pilot, following instructions given to him. Cub wondered if it was even still Scar beside him, or if he had been completely inhabited by the magical force.

To answer Cub's unspoken question, Scar turned towards him, those glowing blue eyes somehow emitting a strong sense of familiar power and mischief.

" _Welcome back, convexes_ ," Scar spoke in that high-pitched, airy voice again, and he shoved the vex mask onto Cub's face, pushing him back into the upside-down wooden stair.

_"We are back at the Vex HQ. Hello there, fellow Vex Cub, how are you?"_

_"I'm not sure if you know this, but after every Vex prank, we take some of their riches. That's why we have these gold and diamond and emerald blocks around. Just so they know who's in charge, y'know? Just a little souvenir for us."_

_"Welcome back to ConCorp, the future of everything. We're introducing a new program today, Scar, called the ConCorp Buyback Program. We're providing a service for the poor hermits on the server. They do some work for us, and we pay them in diamonds."_

_"Look at my diamond throne, Cub! Look at all the riches we've made from ConCorp this season!"_

"Cub," Scar said excitedly, and Cub turned towards his fellow masked convex. It was Scar next to him again, no longer the vexes speaking through him. A vex flew up to Scar's shoulder and took a seat there. "I remember now!"

It was more than just memory. It was the familiarity of this constant boosting energy that Scar's crystals were trying to mimic. It was the power of magic in his veins, in his muscles, and everything he knew he could do with it. It was the return of their vexian friends, of mischief and shenanigans, of another version of fun server-wide domination.

His and Scar's working relationship were no longer a vague imprint of a past life. They were solid, grounded in memories, and their continued partnership - as the vex wanted by guiding them here - only promised more good times to come.

"So do I!" Cub grinned. "And we almost didn't get here because you didn't believe in the directions of the crystals!"

Scar shoved him and laughed. The vex on his shoulder yelped at the sudden movement, threw Scar a displeased look and turned to settle on Cub's shoulder instead. "It's not my fault the hints were so vague on my end! All the initial magic my crystals channeled all went towards you!"

"Aren't you glad I dragged you here?" Cub gestured around them, and Scar nodded.

"What should we do now?" Scar asked, directing the question towards the vexes fluttering around the room, tittering in joy at their return. The vexes only laughed at them, but they understood what the vexes meant.

"Lay low," Scar nodded. His hands raised to his face and he slipped his vex mask off. "It's not time for server dominance yet."

Cub followed suit. He prepared himself for the familiar disappearance of vex energy, the exhaustion that followed soon after removing their masks - but the vexes continued to hang around, vex magic continued to flow through his veins, and the excitement and adrenaline rush of being a convex again kept him energetic.

Cub wondered after two seasons of using vex magic, if their bodies had finally adjusted enough to it that they would no longer feel the exhaustion that followed. He supposed they would have to wait and see.

"It's not time," Cub agreed, "but maybe… we could leave a sign here and there? Dropping hints that the convexes are back?" The vexes laughed in response; they liked that idea.

Scar beamed. "Consider it done," he said, directing his response to both Cub and the vexes, "You know the town hall? I'll drop a few blocks of vex magic in there. Just on the road to the diamond throne. It'll be subtle; only those who notice them will pick up the hint, and we won't say anything about it."

"Sounds like a plan," Cub agreed, and raised his hand in a clasping high five that Scar returned. He stood up from where they had been sitting on the upside-down stairs and nodded towards the doorway, gripping his vex mask tightly in his hand. "Shall we be on our way? I have some crystals to break down and bury in the open, so they won't break through my pyramid again."

"Oh Cub," Scar said, sliding off the upside-down stair and following Cub towards the exit of the secret room, "those crystals still have magic in them. I expect them to be sending you on another adventure soon."

"Should I be afraid?"

"Nah," Scar grinned widely, throwing a mischievous sideway glance at Cub. "There's nothing to be afraid of."

THE END

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you thought?


End file.
